The number of A-kassa’s earnings-related allowance recipients decreased in December-January, indicating a gradually improving employment situation. During this period, 36,925 members received earnings-related allowance from A-kassa, down 5.4% from a year ago. While the recipient numbers were still going up in November, they took a downward turn in December.
In January, the share of recipients of earnings-related allowance of all members stood at 13.1%, down 1.2 percentage points from the previous year. At the same time, the general unemployment rate in Finland increased to 8.3%, up 1.2 percentage points from the year before.
Some A-kassa members work in industries which still have regrettably high unemployment rates. For instance, almost 20% of the members of the Finnish Actors Union received earnings-related allowance at the turn of the year.
Lay-off numbers slightly down
The number of recipients of lay-off period daily allowance decreased by 6.1% compared to the same period last year. Out of earnings-related allowance recipients, the share of laid-off persons was 44.9%, down 0.3 percentage points from December-January of last year. Even though the lay-off numbers remain elevated, the decrease is party explained by the particularly high comparands at the turn of the year in 2023.
Application numbers and payment amounts down
We received a total of 79,654 earnings-related allowance applications in December-January, down 5% from the same period last year. The majority of the applications (57.9%) were follow-up applications. Applications for adjusted allowance made up 34.9% and first-time applications made up 7.2% of all applications received.
The total amount of earnings-related allowances paid out went down distinctly, as much as 8.9% from the same period last year, totalling 82.1 million euros. The average number of payout days remained almost unchanged at 18.2 days – the year before it stood at 18.4 days. Day-specific earnings-related allowance for a 20-day payment period was 76.65 euros in January, a decrease of 3.1% from last year.
Statistics reflect the impact of legislative amendments
The aforementioned decreases in payment amounts, day-specific earnings related allowance and number of recipients of earnings-related allowance reflect the changes in unemployment security that entered into force in 2024. These numbers have been affected by the legislative amendments from the previous year, such as the extension of the qualifying period to seven days, the removal of child increments and the protected part of adjusted daily allowance, as well as the employment condition extension and the staggering of earnings-related allowance that have been in force since September. The decline in the number of recipients has likely also been affected by the simultaneous decrease in the number of applications.
Abolished at the start of the year, the now-gone supplementary amount further reduces payment amounts which should be increasingly evident in the statistics of the coming months.
